


Reminisce

by PastelHanzo



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, Caitlin is a horrible person and did horrible things to her childer, Caitlin makes me uncomfy, Character Turned Into Vampire, Elder Vampires are fucking nuts, Gen, Just some random stuff I feel like angsting about
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:41:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26551516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PastelHanzo/pseuds/PastelHanzo
Summary: Louis looks back.Basically I'm just gonna write a bunch of stuff from different character perspectives and post them on here so my players can read them for funsies...
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

Louis’s beast railed against the inner walls of his mind, howling and gibbering like the feral and monstrous headache it was. It demanded more, more than just tearing Alexis apart, more than destroying every little thing he could find in Hector’s havens. More, always more, it was starving, craving justice, needing to feel Ventrue flesh and blood between its fangs.

_Crush them between your claws, make them beg as they made us!_

He sighed and rubbed the space between his brows, trying to soothe the tension building from this near-frenzy migraine.

It had been perhaps a month, perhaps longer, since he saw an incendiary round rip through Jussi’s forehead and reduce him to ash, leaving behind only the brightly coloured pin in his hand. The feel of it was oddly comforting, that he at least had something remaining of his…he was unsure if he could call him friend. His thumb by now had smoothed a little dent into the back of it from his anxious toying.

_Betrayal!_

The sound that bubbled up in the back of Louis’s throat brought with it a growling tone of annoyance that caused the hairs on the back of the neck of the ghoul driving to rise in the natural response to being locked in a metal box with an apex predator. His Beast purred for a moment. It was such a delicious response when the prey knew its place.

To distract himself from the Beast’s raving (He loved his Sire but by Lilith was her voice tiring), he clicked his phone on, grimacing for a moment at the light, before scrolling absently through his texts. The thought of calling Diana passed briefly, but paused when he saw ‘Jussi Koskonen’ just underneath. He’d opened it before he could even think not to, and immediate regret sunk heavy in his stomach.

_Jussi stood over Louis as Hector spoke so kindly._

_Jussi stood over the Diablerised body of Hector, the taste of Hector on Louis’s tongue and the dawning of horror._

_Jussi with one eye, hand on Louis’s shoulder, “Tell me what you want Louis, Please”._

_Jussi turning the gun from Alexis to Louis, and the feeling of Louis’s heart dropping._

_Hector’s mad howls and maniacal laughter_.

Louis shook his head quickly, to try and loosen the tightness clawing up his throat, and pretending the hand holding his phone isn’t shaking. Tapping onto his contact, quietly lamenting that he hadn’t managed to get a contact photo for him to remember his face, a clawed thumb hovering over ‘Delete Contact’.

_It was so childish, but the look on Jussi’s face was certainly worth it._

_That monstrous mustard suit now covered in the long black fur of the Gangrel’s Maine Coone self, Louis stretched out as if basking in the sun, claws kneading into the ugly shoulder of the suit._

_Hector would give him a stern word for it, but Louis knew he could never stay mad at the Gangrel. Something about his smile…and his tongue…_

_But oh the look the Childe was giving him! As if this were a prank between siblings and not him staring down the fluffy shape of a much older, much stronger Kindred._

_Louis could only purr in satisfaction._

The Gangrel’s throat tightened again, and he could feel his eyes sting with red. Why did it all have to change? There was an ache of longing for when things were much simpler. Those first nights in Norfolk, unsure with Hector leading him by the hand, making promises of reward if he would just _behave_ and _stop butting heads with Jussi_.

A thick splat of red on the screen of his phone tugged him from the spiral of longing and thought, and he chuffed, taking out a handkerchief and wiping the blood from his eyes. Hector would come back and stake his ass if he got blood on a pristine white suit.

_You’re a Gangrel, not a Ventrue! Blood and fur and claws, not white suits and handkerchiefs!_

He didn’t need the reminder of how he’d changed since he had ventured to Norfolk, and now that he was returning home, there was a certain resolve he had to maintain. Claw had taught him to be proud, to stand up for his clan, and to do so with tooth and nail if he had to.

But for now, in the back of this car, lit only by the screen of his phone and the orange streetlights of the last portion of the A1, Louis allowed himself to finally wail. A mournful, harrowing sound that came from the maw of a broken man, a shattered beast, holding a colourful pin to his chest and _weeping_.

He would emerge from this car as Primogen Chevalier, the proud claws of Clan Gangrel and a feared adversary. The Ventrue would cower before him, beg for mercy and their necks, and receive only the justice he could feel his forbears howling for, Ennoia’s fury rippling through the generations and into his own Beast.

Louis was a strong creature, but holding onto the fleeting memories of when unlife almost seemed good brought him nothing but to his knees for the men he killed, and missed enough for his curse to break the skin of his spine.

He had to maintain control. For the first time in his unlife, control of himself was his own.

He cursed the Ventrue that made him wish it wasn’t so.


	2. Where it began

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So just how did Louis - Primogen to the Gangrel in two cities, slave to the Camarilla, thrall to the Pyramid - get embraced in the first place, by the monster known as Caitlin?

When Louis Chevalier was still Louis Toussaint, he enjoyed nature. 

He enjoyed seeing the beauty the world had to show, and going places he could paint in relative quiet, to give his wife peace and space to have her quiet dalliances with other women. Their arrangement made things easier for both of them, and while a man hadn't caught Louis's eye in a while, he was happy to use this time to vent his artistic frustrations instead of his physical. 

Cumbria's vast hills and wetlands near the lakes always gave him the breath of fresh air he needed to work his art ~~and to keep his nightmares at bay,~~ and a week to camp in a more secluded and less travelled area of the hills was just what he needed to shake his artist's block. His arrival had been amidst the warm summer morning, and the sky a clear, uninterrupted blue, looking to leave him with a stunning muse for his work.

He never saw the storm coming.

It rolled in faster than he could find a suitable place to set up, and almost as soon as his tent had been pitched, it was torn away from him by the wind and the rain, leaving him bare to the elements. Freezing water lashed his skin and clothes, and sent him stumbling into the wilderness to find shelter. Surely in all of these hills there would be somewhere, but it was as if something was acting against, as if the very gods themselves wished to punish him. 

For hours he stumbled through the slick mud and the torrents of rain, lightning streaking the sky and snapping the air. His fingers felt frozen and his chest weighted, the edges of his vision clouded with fatigue and the fear that death had its icy fingers around his throat persisted. 

Just as all hope faded from him like his precious warmth, he saw something that would remain painted above his mantle piece as a reminder that Satan herself does indeed exist, and that he had perceived her as an angel in that moment, ready to take his soul. 

* * *

_Caitlin hated nature. She hated the mud, the rain, the wetness and humidity. But the wilderness was the only place she could let her beast free to vent her frustrations._

_She should have been a Ventrue with her temperament, but the painted claws that tipped her fingers and sharp feline eyes ousted her as an Outlander. Her desperate scramble for power was pitiful, her soul streaked with black and her hands awash with blood, but it was worth it; to be seen as equal to even the lowest Blue Blood was to be an elite among the court, and she had somehow secured the coveted title of Primogen. Oh how they mocked her for her methods, but they now couldn't live the luxury they had grown accustomed to without her._

_It was her childer who served them, her clan that waited on them and did their bidding, and she had no qualm with this. She went to the Tremere for the Willpower Collars, she chained and shackled and broke her clanmates to make them obey, to serve those masters that chained her as surely as she chained her blood. And it was worth it to be seen. For the waifish Toreador Prince to see her, for the Primogen of the Ventrue to invite her to his lavish Elysiums._

_But they always wanted more. They wanted perfect. And she had to provide. She needed a childe who was lost, who had nothing to give but their life, and one who would do it thankfully._

_But no Kine wanted what she needed to provide._

_And so she shed her skin and let the exertion of quadrupedal speed slake the anger and frustration from her body._

_It was as she was giving up her nightly dalliance that she saw him. A broken man caught in a storm, one she barely noticed in her age. He looked like a drowned kitten, long lightened hair clinging to him like a curse, curled in on himself to try and preserve heat, feet barely moving him anymore._

_A man who was lost, with nothing to give but his life._

* * *

A woman stood in the moorish grassland before him, seemingly unfazed by the way the wind licked and whipped at her hair, tilted her head at him and looked with what only could be described as pity in her eyes.

_He was perfect. He was desperate. She needed a childe to train, to throw under the bus when the Ventrue came to collect on her promise. He would thank her for it._

Louis's knees buckled out from under him, with a desperate, ragged sob of a pleading cry for help, and she caught him, like an angel come to save him. He reckoned she had to be warm, but his skin was so numb he couldn't feel it, and he almost wept with relief.

He wanted to thank her, he tried to, but his lips trembled, frozen and almost blue, and all that came out first was a whimper.

She shushed him like one would a crying child, sinking to her knees and laying him over her lap so he was supported, one hand behind his head, the other coming to rest with his hands against his chest. 

_She would make him love her, she decided. The way he stared up at her, with such reverence, such devotion to one he assumed would save him, she wanted that. She wanted to keep him trapped in that adoration for as long as she could. Hide him away from the Ventrue for a bit if she had to. But she would break him in such a way he would not ever notice it. He would think himself enamoured, and she would use that to bind him to her will._

He ran his tongue over his lips to try and warm them a little, and managed to stutter a hoarse 'Merci', before wrack of coughs shook through him.

_She would have to start now, or she would lose him to the elements._

She shushed him again, running a hand over his hair, like petting a dog.

"I am sorry," she sighed as if she regretted what she would do. _Let him think she did this to save him._

She peeled back the wet layers around his throat and he whimpered, she whispering sweet nothings and apologies, before sinking her elegant fangs into his throat. It took almost everything for her not to moan at the taste. This man was finely bred, and she could flavour the warrior's soul in him. _A soldier_. It had been too long since she had indulged her preferred meal. Far, far too long. She missed the glut of Waterloo, the feast of recent war that had ravaged the globe. He must have served recently, as he still held the physique of an active soldier, she could feel corded muscle this close to him. 

While the Embrace would give him the earthen tones Gangrel blood held, she knew it would be a delight to feed from him as often as she could. She would keep him free of the Ventrue for now, but she would fill his world with her until then, and only her. He would be her finest creation.

The perfect pet. 


End file.
